Shut Down The Gonzo Porn Site, Ghetto Gaggers

Just a couple of days ago was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, and ironically it was on that day that we became aware of a website that tortures black women in the most racist and sexually degrading way. Instead of shutting down and becoming overwhelmed, we let our rage fuel our action and created this petition, which we hope you will sign and share.

The website that fueled this petition is called Ghetto Gaggers. We found out about it on the Hycide Magazine website where we came across an essay by Jamel Shabazz called Ghetto Gaggers: A Nation Can Rise No Higher Than It's Women. While many of us disagree with Shabazz on the issue of Louis Farrakhan, in all other points we are in agreement with Shabazz.

We’ve been in conversation with our social networks and learned that Ghetto Gaggers and equivalent sites have been around for years. We’ve heard some people ask, “what can we do about pornography, sexual trafficking and other issues affecting women’s rights?” Those are broader questions that we as a human family need to address, but right now, we’d like to focus on the specific website Ghetto Gaggers. We want your help to shut it down. When we’re successful, we can reverse engineer our results and use them as a template to shut down similar sites like Latina Abuse and Facial Abuse.

We’ve also gotten feedback from people asking whether the Ghetto Gaggers website constitutes race play. If you’re unaware of race play, it is a component of the kink, fetish, and BDSM communities in which the participants willfully engage in sexual behaviors that include racist speech toward the participant who is a person of color. Since the participants in race play are consenting adults of sound mind, we don’t feel it’s right for us to impose our values upon their choices. We are not going to critique race play, kink, fetish, BDSM or pornography in general. What spurs us to action against this porn site is our understanding that the female participants in Ghetto Gaggers are not willful participants.

This understanding is based on the Shabazz article and from sex workers like Sinnamon Love who, in an interview with Phonte Coleman for hiphopdx.com, said, “I think that what they’re doing crosses the line between BDSM and abuse. There’s a difference. BDSM is all consensual. It’s the same as consensual sex. But what [Ghetto Gaggers] does is purely abusive. You can see it. You can watch the women on those films and see the mood shift. You can watch the emotion change in their faces as they go from ‘I can do this’ to ‘what the fuck have I gotten myself into?’ For the newer girls that haven’t been around so long, I think its a matter of economics. They're coming to do a scene because they need to make money and they don’t have enough money to leave, you know? They might have spent their last dollar on the cab ride there and now they’re stuck. They think if they say no, or if they stop mid-point, they may not get paid. So they continue with the abuse out of fear.”

The Shabazz article characterizes the young women in Ghetto Gaggers as motivated by financial desperation to do porn. Some are mothers who are simply trying to care for their children. They are not aware of what they are signing up for. Once they become aware, after the psychological and physical abuse begins, they are not permitted to leave. For us, this falls under the categories of rape, kidnapping, and hate crimes.

Because there have been almost no media stories highlighting the abuses of gonzo pornography sites like Ghetto Gaggers, the criminals who run those organizations get away with their abuse. Gonzo pornography is a subset of hardcore pornography that is notoriously abusive and degrading to the women who appear on film. According to the Shabazz article, one attacker boasted while on camera, “After we get through with them they’re going to have to see a psychiatrist for the rest of their lives.”

Sex worker Clayra Beau had this to say after filming for the Facial Abuse website, “Facial Abuse is all about hurting women as much as they can and getting away with it. One of the clauses in their contracts says that you can not come back to them for any physical or emotional damages caused during your shoot. Therefore they could literally fuck a girl up for life and she can do nothing about it. It's a typical clause but they really use it to their advantage. The stuff that happened to me should never happen to anyone so I would suggest a boycott of this site.”

On the Anti-Porn website, a supporter named Lance wrote, “Seeing these videos broke my heart because it is clear many of these young women, though they sign a contract, are not ready for the kind of abuse they endure. I did some background research on the founders of these abusive porn websites and they claim that it is all an act, and that it is no different than boxing, where adults consent to such activities. But the abuse in these films is very real, and I believe the filmmakers are heavily insulated from contract liability. (They have a team of attorneys working for them). Here was apparently a case where one of the participants named ‘Ivy,’ a Ghanaian immigrant who was in one of the Ghetto Gaggers videos, tried to commit suicide after making the film.”

There is a DCMA Complaint against porn sites like Latina Abuse, Facial Abuse and Ghetto Gaggers. But unless federal prosecutors like Paul J. Fishman, U.S. Attorney of the District of New Jersey, go after these criminals, they will continue to get rich from physically and psychologically abusing women.

A whois.com check of the Ghetto Gaggers website reveals the Administrative Contact is D&E Media LLC of East Orange, NJ. A search of business names at the State of New Jersey, Department of Treasury website shows no listing for D&E Media LLC. But criminals often hide in the shadows. As the saying goes, “evil flourishes when good [people] do nothing.” Let’s do something. Please sign and share this petition via email or social media.